Previous Plans for Escape

Broken time have you been captive
on this peculiar little planet
a hundred of their sad years
the first of your species
sent to explore for reasons
long forgotten as you have been.
Crawling through a dark prison
constructed for your strangeness
the corridor long and unfamiliar
the sounds loud and sinister
someone else’s makeshift beliefs
yet familiar photographs on walls
of confinement and privation
the blood on the ceiling
reminds you of the sacred region
of your distant in memory planet
you have only injured swiftness
left to get to the corridor’s end
into that place of journey’s memory
where a hidden spacecraft awaits
but movement is nothing but mockery
of previous plans for escape.

—J. J. Steinfeld